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Tuesday, 9 August 2016

First Blood 1914: Amphion and Königin Luise

On 4th August 1914 Germany rejected the British
ultimatum to withdraw from neutral Belgium, which had been invaded in the
preceding days. From 2300 hrs that evening both countries were at war. Britain’s Royal Navy was already on a war
footing and sweeps of the North Sea
were already underway. The Imperial German Navy was not idle either and action
was immediately undertaken to sow mines in British waters. The success of mining
in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War had demonstrated the effectiveness of such
measures.

Königin Luise - she was to have a very brief life in naval service

One is however surprised that dedicated minelayers had not already
been constructed and commissioned by Germany. A hasty conversion was however undertaken
of the 2000 ton, 20-knot Königin Luise
of the Hamburg-Amerika company, an excursion vessel which had been in service
for just one year carrying tourists between Hamburg and the island of
Heligoland. Though plans were apparently in place to arm the Königin Luise with two 3.5-inch guns
there was no time for this as she was impressed for service on 3rd
August and rushed into service in her new role. By the time of declaration of
war on 4th August, she was rushing towards the Thames estuary with
180 mines on board.

Königin Luisein pre-war excursion service

Unknown to the Königin
Luise, her course was heading her towards a patrol of the Royal Navy’s newly
created Harwich Force, entrusted with patrolling the Southern North Sea and
protecting trade-routes between Britain and the Netherlands. The patrol consisted
of four L-Class destroyers, led by the scout cruiser HMS Amphion. Commissioned in 1913, the 3340-ton Amphion was 405 feet long and her 18000 HP drove her at a maximum
of 25 knots of four shafts. Designed primarily as a leader for destroyer
flotillas, she carried negligible armour and her armament of ten
singly-mounted 4-inch guns –
supplemented by two submerged 18-inch (450 mm) torpedo tubes – must have made
fire control difficult in the extreme.

HMS Amphion

At 0900 hrs on 5th August Amphion’s group encountered a trawler which reported seeing a suspicious
steamer "throwing things overboard". The skipper described her position
as nearly as he could and Amphion
headed towards it, subsequently sighting what proved to be Königin Luise, still in buff, black and yellow peacetime commercial
colours. The German vessel turned and ran for home and a 30-mile chase followed
before one of the British destroyers, HMS Lance,
could open fire at 4400 yards with her 4-inch guns. Her first shot was the
first British shot of World War I and the responsible weapon from Lance is on now display at London’s
Imperial War Museum. Amphion now
entered the fray and her fire doomed the Königin
Luise. With her stern badly damaged she began to sink, going down around
noon. Every attempt was made by the British vessels to rescue 75 German
survivors from the water out of a total crew of some 100.

A contemporary magazine's impression of the chase, as seen from the British destroyers

Amphion and her
destroyers now continued on their assigned task to sweep the waters north of
the Dutch Friesan Islands, reaching there at 2100 hrs – dusk in this area. No
further German forces were encountered and Captain Cecil H. Fox of Amphion was now faced with the dilemma of what course to set for
Harwich, having only minimal information as to the exact location in which Königin Luise had laid her mines. His
decision to steer through an area some seven miles west of where he thought the
mines were brought his force directly into the danger area.
At 0635 hrs on 6th August Amphion
struck a mine. Detonating beneath the bridge, the effect was catastrophic,
breaking the cruiser’s back and setting her forward section on fire.

A German view of the sinking of HMS Amphion - with the Koenigin Luise escaping on the right.In actuality the latter had been sunk some eighteen hours previously.

The destroyer HMS Linnet tried to take Amphion
in tow but by now she was hogging so badly, and threatening to break in two,
that there was no option but to abandon her. The forward magazine now exploded,
rupturing the hull and throwing one entire 4-in gun mounting past the Linnet. A shell hurled by the explosion
landed on the destroyer Lark, killing
two of her crew and the single German prisoner whom they had earlier plucked
from the water. Amphion sank soon
after – with a loss of 132 of her crew and an unspecified number of German
prisoners. One of the survivors was her first-lieutenant, John Tovey, who in
World War 2 was to be Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet and the
mastermind of the destruction of the Bismarck.
His subsequent responsibility – a most appropriate one in view of his
experience on Amphion – was for
controlling the east coast convoys and organising minesweeping operations.

By midday on August 6th 1914, some forty-eight
hours of declaration of war, bodies and wreckage strewed the North Sea and both
Britain and Germany had drawn first blood in the murderous conflict that was to
follow.

Britannia’s Shark by Antoine Vanner

But now a group of revolutionaries threaten the economic
basis of that power. Their weapon is the invention of a naïve genius, their
sense of grievance is implacable and their leader is already proven in the
crucible of war. Protected by powerful political and business interests,
conventional British military or naval power cannot touch them. A daring act of
piracy draws the ambitious British naval officer, Nicholas Dawlish, and his
wife into this deadly maelstrom. Amid the wealth and squalor of America’s
Gilded Age, and on a fever-ridden island ruled by savage tyranny success – and
survival –will demand making some very strange alliances...

Britannia’s Shark brings historic naval fiction into the dawn of
the Submarine Age.

I agree - it's surprising that Imperial Germany never appreciated the need for overseas bases - other than the massive investment made at Tsingtao - if it was to have global ambitions. The Cameroons or Togo in West Africa, and Dar-es-Salaam in teh East, wold have been essential. The possibility of acquiring the Philippines from the Spanish was backed down from. One can imagine however the Dutch being open to sale of an island in the East Indies. One could even imagine acquisition of a Danish possession in the Caribbean. The costs would however have been massive - one Tsingtao was probably all that could be afforded.

About Me

My "Dawlish Chronicles" are set in the late 19th Century and reflect my deep interest in the politics, attitudes and technology of the period. The fifth novel in the series, “Britannia’s Amazon” is now available in both paperback and Kindle formats. It follows the four earlier Dawlish Chronicles, "Britannia's Wolf", "Britannia's Reach”, "Britannia's Shark" and "Britannia's Spartan". Click on the book covers below to learn more or to purchase.
I’ve had an adventurous career in the international energy industry and am proud of having worked in every continent except Antarctica. History is a driving passion in my life and I have travelled widely to visit sites of historical significance, many insights gained in this way being reflected in my writing. I welcome contact on Facebook and via this Blog. My website is www.dawlishchronicles.com and its “Conflict” section has a large number of articles on topics from the mid-18th Century to the early 20th Century.